Mr. Guerra said one possible reason for the planned moves could be that Venezuela is afraid it could be compelled to pay billions of dollars in compensations to foreign companies that have gone to court to recover damages for companies Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has nationalized.

This in my opinion is the only reason. All the rest is noise.

Very soon an ARB award will be announced re mobil, conocophillips, and others. There are 20 arb cases filed altogether against Venezuela according to icsid for now..

The first 2 i list involved up to 12 B dollARS.

the best way out is to hide the money where it can't be accessed. All gone in 2 months. but arb awards take years. Arb decsions take too long in the first place.

readers may say, well, seize the tankers but all floating assets do not cover the arb cases now on file. Are there more to come??

File an injunction to prevent hiding the assets. If that's possible.